FILM REVIEW: THE HATEFUL EIGHT (70mm)

Runtimes- 187 minutes (Roadshow Version) 167 minutes (waste of money general version. In an unfortunate turn I meant to see this a while ago so I could review the 70mm version for those interested in seeing it, but I caught the last 70mm full version and it isn’t worth seeing it without that, at least not until it comes out on home video. Oops.)

Tarantino is a polarizing figure. We all seemingly love his films, but the man himself has proven to be an enigma. Sometimes he says something that seems pretty on point, but then he’ll say or do something really douchey. It stems from the fact that often he has something to say, but he goes about it the wrong way or doesn’t understand the issue at hand. Take for instance him saying Selma shouldn’t have been nominated for an Oscar, but an Emmy. That’s a pretty backhanded comment at filmmaker Ava Duvernay and people called him out on it. He later wrote a follow up piece stating he didn’t get across what he meant to say, he was trying to talk about how films no longer feel cinematic and looked like they were made for TV. He was just using that film as an example, he even revealed he hadn’t seen the film. This is the big issue, because he didn’t say or imply what he later said he truly meant, he composed a phrase that was witty yet utterly horrible and he didn’t get how that might rub people the wrong way. All we got out of that was him being an idiot, any point he wanted to make got lost due in part to his big mouth. This is also a problem with a lot of his movies. They’re great and witty, but they have notable flaws to them that you can’t help but think if he’d just thought it out more, he might have avoided the issues altogether. Sometimes this proves to not be an issue and the films triumph in the end, but other times you feel it holds him back. The Hateful Eight, the director’s eighth feature (GET IT!!!) falls victim to this. It ultimately works, but if he’d just worked at it a bit more or took some of his criticisms seriously, he might be on a Kubrickian level of perfection. It’s a film that shows tremendous growth in his styles and themes but also one that has him fall victim to his typical tendencies. Regardless of that fact though, I loved this movie. It might be flawed, but what works in this movie really freaking works.

The film is essentially a morbid take on The Iceman Cometh, with almost all the action being set in a little Inn. We open in the American West a few years after the Civil War and we’re introduced to Major Marquis Warren a.k.a. The Bounty Hunter, as he comes across John Ruth a.k.a. The Hangman escorting Daisy Domergue a.k.a. The Prisoner to hang for her crimes in the nearby town of Red Rock. A blizzard is coming so the coachman decides they should stop at a nearby inn, picking up Chris Mannix a.k.a. The Sheriff along the way. Once they reach the Inn, the storm traps them all inside. The Inn is currently occupied by a group of msifits in the form of Oswaldo Mobray a.k.a The Little Man, Bob a.k.a The Mexican, Joe Gage a.k.a. The Cow Puncher, and Sanford Smithers a.k.a The Confederate. With the whole lot reeking of no good, The Hangman declares everyone best stay away from his prisoner. From there on out it’s just some good ol’ Tarantino fun.

On a side note I find it weird it’s called The Hateful Eight when there are nine people in the cabin, I don’t get why the coachman doesn’t count.

Regardless of that, the film brings to mind a lot of classic plays and films that Tarantino wonderfully adds his own flare to. It’s remarkable that most of his films use borrowed elements from other sources, but not once does it ever feel like he’s stealing. For instance, this film just oozes John Carpenter’s The Thing. It sounds bizarre, but it’s oddly fitting (and not just because both have Kurt Russell). That was also a film about people trapped inside of a building by a blizzard, with the plot revolving around someone not being who they appear to be. There’s a whole scene in The Hateful Eight where you see the characters set out a line to the outhouse, and oddly parallels the storage space where they throw a prisoner in Carpenter’s classic. Mind you I don’t know why this has been done seeing as it doesn’t play into the movie at all, but it does seem to help the audience make the conenction. The most striking comparison however is the score. Both films are composed by Ennio Morricone (god himself and the greatest film composer to ever live). While Morricone’s inclusion in the film is largely seen as a reference to The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly since both are Westerns and that film is largely considered Morricone’s opus, the sound bears a more notable resemblance to The Thing, which matches the tone better. The Spaghetti Western sound worked well for Django, but it would have been out of place here. Of course it didn’t shock me to find out later that due to Morricone’s age and time he had to get the score done, they had to use some of his older tracks to fill out the soundtrack. So they used three unused tracks from one of his 80’s classics, and that movie turned out to be The Thing. If you’re gonna steal, might as wells teal from the best. Aside from that, Tarantino indulges in his usual song selections that almost always make his films more distinct. Here however I think he falters, as it breaks in form of the Morricone score and sticks out like a sore thumb. For Morricone’s sake though, this was the best soundtrack I’ve heard in quite some time.

It almost feels effortless how Tarantino strings together his films. Every scene grabs the attention, not a single moment feels wasted. This movie is three hours long and not once did it feel that way. I was shocked I never got tired, I even thought the film was moving pretty fast all things considered. By the time the intermission hit my only reaction was,” Are we that far already?” You just never want it to end. This is largely due to the characters Tarantino creates, which you love to see interact with one another. None of the central characters are “good” they’re all terrible people. Just when you think you’re supposed to relate to someone, you’re given a clear reason not to. This is great because it means the film never feels unfocused. You grow on one character and a soon as they do something horrible our sympathies shift to the next. It’s a lot of characters stuffed in a small room and some get more screen time than others, but you feel everyone was sort of meant to be there. It needed no more characters and taking them away would make us spend too much time on one hateful character. They all of course have that great Tarantino dialogue that’s always riveting.

Tarantino still doesn’t get why people don’t like it when he uses the N word however. He thinks he does, he addresses it upfront, but he clearly doesn’t. It isn’t as bad as Django, and at times it even seems to be used effectively in line with the film’s theme, but it still feels like he just loves to say it because it sounds cool. It’s one of those things while watching where it sort of bugs you because you feel how unnecessary it is and how it draws attention to itself. That may be his desired effect, but I’m not sure if it’s effective in the way he thinks it is. What was much more effective was the use of violence. This is probably the goriest film Tarantino has ever made, and it serves a greater purpose than to just entertain for once. With Django I feel it’s fun, but ultimately pointless in how violent it is at times (the film ends at a point, but feels like it goes on so it can have a big violent finish). Here, Tarantino is discussing something pretty serious, and the violence the film employees actually has somewhat of an effect in delivering that message (more on that later though).

I want to get into the core flaws here, because they are there. For once the Tarantinoisms are distracting. I mentioned it with the music, but any little detail that feels like he’s doing it just to put his own personal stamp on it becomes distracting. His own voiceover in particular is bothersome. For one it comes off as smug since it’s the director literally stepping in to sound clever and it robs the film of any sense of mystery. What the voice over explains is stuff that could have been communicated in a different way that wouldn’t have felt out of place. He draws attention to his running gags (yes Tarantino, I saw the cigarettes, you don’t have to name drop them) and by and large this does not feel like his other movies where that would have worked. I also have to note a big feature of the film is that it’s a mystery, and the mystery matters so little. I’m reminded of A Study in Scarlet, the first of the Sherlock Holmes story. Much of what makes that interesting is the characters themselves and the mystery afoot. Yet it commits the cardinal sin of a work of mystery, it withholds information from the audience that is key to solving the mystery. This means the audience has no means in which to reasonably guess the outcome because they’ve ostensibly been misled. The Hateful Eight is guilty of this just the same. Almost any moment that should come off as surprising rings hollow since there’s no way the audience could have known that. There’s a whole scene where they discuss how a sign used to be in the inn and it reveals one of the eight is a liar. Yet wouldn’t it work better if the sign were in the background the whole time, and eagle eye viewers might catch it and put the clues together. The film lacks surprises, something Tarantino is known for. In Pulp Fiction a main character dies midway through the film, and you don’t expect it, it’s a shocking moment. The end of the first Kill Bill reveals a plot detail that changes everything, because the film at hand didn’t hinge on that knowledge like it does in The Hateful Eight. Inglorious Basterds starts as simply fun revisionist history but in the last scenes you realize just how revisionist it truly is, it’s surprising and rewarding. You don’t get that here and while I still like the scenes as they play out, I feel it might have been more effective if he played with the mystery element a bit more.

But ultimately that is not the focus. This is Tarantino’s first political movie, a feat I thought I’d never see. Django best describes what I think of Tarantino’s approach to serious subject matters, he’s not serious about anything. He took the Holocaust and American slavery and made them revenge fantasies. I admire the variety as I feel it’s great to have these movies, but they really shouldn’t be the only representation we keep coming to. They’re meant to be a sort of taking back history for the victim’s tale. Their schlocky revenge flicks and while they have their notable issues with how they handle the subject matter, they’re entertaining. Inglorious Basterds is by far one of the best films of the 2000’s. Django is a bit more passable and I care less and less about it as time has gone on, and it appeared his newest feature would be a sort of retread of that. It comes off as more of a criticism of Django than anything else. The Inn in the film is supposed to be America, they even do a whole bit where they flat out state that’s what it’s supposed to be, so you can see the character interactions as sort of how Americans get along with one another. The thing is they don’t get along at all and everyone is horrible. Characters pride themselves on lost causes and lies, the America we see is essentially a lie. In a brilliant scene we see what happened before our characters convened to endure the storm. It’s a bunch of people of different cultures coming together, and most of them are black. Then we see what happens to them and when you think of the Inn as America, the whole scene carries a weight that most Tarantino movies dream of having. That’s why the violence in this film works, because it’s a representation of what this country does to itself. The Bounty Hunter states a black man is only safe when white people are disarmed, because the situation present benefits them more than anyone else. The Confederate doesn’t care bloodshed has occurred around him, he gets to sit back and enjoy the fact he’s still alive next to the cozy fire, while everyone else took the fall despite being just as involved as he was in the grand scheme of things. There is a distinct lie all the white characters in the film take pride in, it makes them feel proud and not racist. When it’s revealed to them as a lie, they reveal their true colors and show just how racist and hateful they truly are. By the end of the film you realize there is some hope for us all. The lie isn’t a bad one, just not one that reflects our current life. One day we might stumble into the light and things won’t be as violent. Tarantino seems to think so.

Aside form the theme, the other big achievement is the presentation. Tarantino made a big deal that this film would be in 70mm and screened on hardcore film, and he delivered on that promise. It was a theatrical experience like no other. I received a lovely program harkening back to when they handed them out to cinemagoers in the 50’s and 60’s and we all gathered around the screen as the overture played. The Roadshow version comes complete with an overture and intermission, which is necessary for the film’s pacing. It really is two halves that make a whole, much like old stage plays. Without it, the film feels segmented poorly and it might make the overall film feel longer. I’ve felt as if a lot of movies require intermissions as many stage adaptations awkwardly translate to the big screen and many stories work better in this format. It gives the audience time to use the bathroom and allows for patrons to get more snacks. It’s a win win situation if you ask me. There’s been mixed results with screenings of the movie due to the nature of screening 70mm film, but mine went off without a hitch. The image quality was lovely, it added so much to the look of the film and the whole thing felt like it made the screening special. More movies need to do this. If you can’t see it this way, then don’t see the movie in theaters. Just wait to see it later where you can watch the full version at home.

Overall I really admired this movie. It’s incredibly flawed, but what worked I think made it more than worth it. I do wish that one day we might get a Pulp Fiction level classic out of Tarantino once more, but that’s sort of too high of a bar. If he kept making movies like this I think I’d be content, just please listen to your critics for once Tarantino, we might get a perfect movie out of you yet. Also never use slow motion again. I didn’t mention it before but the slow motion in this movie is awful. Even if the humor it creates is supposed to be intentional, it really feels unintentional and it was one of the funniest things I saw all year. So if you can see The Hateful Eight in glorious 70mm, I highly recommend you do it. If not, I’m sorry this review came late to tell you that, I was sort of broke and couldn’t do it sooner. I also just realized the Roadshow is over in America as far as I know, so it may be theoretically impossible. Again, oops.